https://www.tweaktown.com/news/71971/microsoft-flight-simulator-specs-150gb-hdd-ideal-spec-rtx-2080/index.html
 
Microsoft's flight simulator, an upcoming game designed to bring real-life scenarios of flying an airplane, just got a list of system requirements needed to run a game. To play with Flight Simulator, you would at least need to have a quad-core CPU like AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel Core i5-4460 equipped system, along with 8 GB of RAM. For graphics, you would need a GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM, where the requirement is either AMD Radeon RX 570 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 GPU. Another interesting observation is the requirement of 150 GB of drive space, meaning that this game will be pretty big. Internet connection needs to be 5 Mbps at minimum, and as you up the resolution and graphics, you would need a faster connection. You can check out the entire table below.

The need for incrementally faster connection comes out of one reason - adaptive streaming. The game looks stunning, and if you wish to play at the highest quality, parts of the game will be rendered in the cloud. Microsoft is using its Azure infrastructure to help and render parts of the game and stream it down to your PC. This ensures that your PC is capable of playing the game and Microsoft is showing how they can tap the power of cloud for uses like this.
 
I expect there will be some awesome graphics for this simulator. 
 
 
 

 
 

Well I was going to get this when it became available ... not so sure now
 
32 GB system RAM .... seams very high ...
 
What is MS thinking needing 50 Mbps bandwidth - for best quality ... I do not want to be forced to use any MS service to "play a game" - much less Bing
 
"Adaptive Streaming is something special that Microsoft is doing with Flight Simulator, tapping the cloud to render parts of the game and then stream it down to your PC."


 
Just let people download a region & play

Wow, 150 GB game.  I'm sure that will increase over time.

Their "ideal" spec calls for 32GB of RAM? LOL ok bud and why the hell would anyone need 50mb bandwidth to play a flight sim? Even if it's online and connected there is no way in hell 50mb bandwidth is going to be needed unless this is a streamed game service like Stadia or GeForce Now. 

CraptacularOne
and why the hell would anyone need 50mb bandwidth to play a flight sim? Even if it's online and connected there is no way in hell 50mb bandwidth is going to be needed unless this is a streamed game service like Stadia or GeForce Now. 

World map and textures are streamed in from microsoft servers. This was announced or leaked a while ago. I don't remember if they announced or leaked whether an ugly-looking offline mode will be available.
 
edit:
 
Over 2 petabytes of data potentially available to access from Microsoft's servers.  An accurate 1:1 representation of the world down to the centimeter level?  I'm not so sure about that, but we'll see.  Probably major cities and landmarks will be very high detail, but I am skeptical whether the houses and streets in the middle of nowhere will be substantially less fuzzy and blocky compared to what we are used to from Flight Sim X.  We'll see.
 
https://forums.evga.com/New-Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-coming-in-2020-m2963397.aspx
 
Starting at 2:17 in the video below : "One of the more revelant [sic] ones to this discussion...".  Revelant?  Ugh
 

flyinion

Hoggle

GTXJackBauer

I was wondering how it would manage to store the data but streaming for the microsoft servers makes sense but it also makes me wonder about the long term support the game will have. For a flight sim if it's good people could be playing it for a long time.

The video mentioned use of an offline mode.  He also seemed to be talking from the perspective of it running on a console.  So hopefully the PC version will allow a full offline install otherwise yeah I can see that being an issue.  Man that video looks amazing though.  If it can show that kind of detail on current systems and somehow manage to stay @ or above 30FPS.  I was thinking of switching from FSX to Prepar3d 4.x but I might hold off and see how this goes since we're probably talking $60-70 for this vs about $200 for the "correct" Prepar3d license.  Benefit of going with the LM product for me though is that most of my scenery addons already work with it (OrbX and REX Texture Direct 4.x) and I just have to buy a few planes at some point like a new version of the PMDG 737 that I really like and some small prop stuff for casual sightseeing.

While this game looks more and more amazing, I think this thing will be a threat to some that have data caps with their ISPs.

Unfortunately the more I read, the more I believe the "idea" has far surpassed technology. This almost sounds like Roberts Space Industries and his idea for creating a universe. Hell No Mans Sky didn't really pull it off either because they just used fixed assets and assigned algorithms to manipulate them to create the diversity.
 
I mean, can you imagine having the entire globe in HD resolution? That would be an ungodly amount of data... we just haven't gotten there yet. When the entire globe gets on fiber optics from server to jack/outlet in your home, then it may be possible. 

GTXJackBauer
Wow, 150 GB game.  I'm sure that will increase over time.

It's the whole world at high resolution. I think 150GB is kinda small. It's gonna need a couple of TB to cache areas you fly frequently imho.

Brad_Hawthorne

GTXJackBauer
Wow, 150 GB game.  I'm sure that will increase over time.

It's the whole world at high resolution. I think 150GB is kinda small. It's gonna need a couple of TB to cache areas you fly frequently imho.

Yup.  I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.

May be cheaper to get a license and learn to fly.